Around a third of teachers fear pupils are at least 18 months behind on learning due to the pandemic, a new survey shows.
Some 36 per cent of primary teachers in state schools who responded to a survey said they thought closing the learning gap would take 18 months or more, while 32 per cent of secondary state school teachers thought the same.
Overall, classroom teachers were slightly more pessimistic about how long it would take to close the learning gap than headteachers or members of the senior leadership teams (SLT).
Just under a third (32 per cent) of teachers surveyed thought it would take 18 months or more, compared with 31 per cent of SLT and 28 per cent of heads.
The survey of 4,690 UK teachers, carried out by Teacher Tapp for Bett UK, found that teachers at independent schools were more optimistic. The majority of private secondary school teachers thought that their students’ learning gap would be closed within six months.
Only 3 per cent of teachers in state schools did not think there was a learning gap caused by the coronavirus crisis, compared with 19 per cent of private school teachers.
